So this is what "Due to a change in the owner's circumstances" feels like

How did I manage to fuck my life up quite so spectacularly?

A pretentious foreward…

I write these Substacks after work at night and am often dejected and exhausted. So, please see them as a scream in a snapshot of time and not the permanent state. Yesterday the dogs escaped THREE times between them. The last dog came in at 2am and got into bed with me. The smell of blood was overwhelming but I was so tired I just slept and dreamt she had a massive gash in her eg. Woke up this morning to discover the smell of blood was actually just the iron-rich mud of which we have an abundance, right now, and perhaps a trace of whatever she'd been tucking into while out cruising the hedges of Lullington and the surrounding villages for a small furry or feathery tasty snack.

I guess if you have dogs, especially dogs like these podencos, you'll get it is part of every day life, and if not, you'll think I'm a chaotic irresponsible dog owner. Probably both parts of that are equally true.

…to an unglamorous Substack about mud

“Mudstone is formed when clay and silt-sized particles are compacted and lithified after weathering and erosion of other rocks.”

“Podencos have selective hearing and an independent nature. They take off running and WILL NOT come back until they feel like it. They are known for their strong chase and prey drive and exceptional hunting instincts. They require experienced and capable owners to reduce the potential for disaster.”

“A landlord should take steps to accommodate written requests from responsible tenants with pets. They should only turn down a request in writing within a 28 day period if there is good reason to do so, such as large pets in smaller properties or flats, or otherwise properties where having a pet could be impractical.”

the dog has two speeds, still and 20 mph. i have two speeds, still and face down in the mud.

It rains a lot in Somerset, the rain falls and it falls. Mud is everywhere.

Even the rocks are mud. The Triassic mudstone around here is made of densely compacted sediment from billions of years ago mud. We have newborn baby mud and mud as old as time. The roads flood with the mud rocks that are washed from the fields into the roads.

Everywhere underfoot is sticky and slippery. Even walking on the flat in fancy cross-country fancy daps is like skiing, the sound underfoot is like a jangling of change in a pocket - there are probably 100 names for mud here but I haven’t been in Somerset long enough to learn them. I’ve only been here long enough to annoy villagers with sensible pets that are bred for being easily trained. How the fuck do you train a podenco, I daily wonder as I walk the fields with a pocket full of ox heart and liver pate. Big dog money prizes. And they still won’t come on down.

Yesterday I walked the dogs on a golf course and hit a soggy patch on a hill just as one of the dogs took off after something, again, and me being attached to them with leads meant I slid and capered and wheeled my arms and inevitably ended on my arse. Some pricks with their golf sticks shouted fore angrily at me, despite me clinging polites to the outer edges of their precious green space. As I clambered back to my two legs and upright, they shouted fore again more urgently.

“FOR FUCKS SAKE,” I shouted, “CAN’T YOU SEE I’M ON MY ARSE HERE.”

They say you shouldn’t shout around and especially not at podencos.

Well there’s another thing I’m getting wrong.

Puddles are like ponds. Underground streams burst up from the ground and run across the road and pool in dips so that a drive to the Co-Op is like the log flume at Alton Towers.

Just off to the shop, want anything?

A few dry days and these fords shrink a little but never entirely because before long the rain will fall and fall some more again.

Leica, the little pod, slipped out while I was doing the bins this morning. Despite a ten meter bright yellow plastic training lead, there was no chance I’d catch her. I took off after her, alternating increasingly desperate screams of “come” and parping on the gundog whistle.

Little pod, Leica

Brambles grab at your clothes like cats’ claws. Skidding across the first grassy wet field, it’s really extraordinary how destablising a bit of soggy earth can be. But nothing’s as bad as the mud in the next “field” in name only. Clods of heavy clay-like mud clump around my trainers until I’m slowed almost to a stop.

Outside the vets, tied to a lamp post because they both refused to come in

I have a tracker on the dog, and an app expressly designed for this type of escapade. I watched her tracker battery go down, 32%, 28%…I don’t have long before it dies. The harder it is for the GPS to find coverage, the more battery it uses. In London, the trackers last for days on end. Here, I charge them twice a day usually. The pop up on the screen tells me “communication is taking some time due to poor coverage”. How much ground has she covered while the tracker isn’t working. She averaged eight to 18mph. Oh, there we go, tracker’s dead.

mud, mud, glorious mud. NOT

Pulling my weighted feet up with each step, I turn back to pursue her by car.